We’re in our third year at Textfyre and nearing the completion of our third game, Empath’s Gift. Empath is now in a state where the game can be played through to several of its conclusions. There’s a bit more paint to dry before it goes into beta-testing, but that should happen in the next few weeks. I can’t offer a firm release date yet, but it’s looking like sometime in late June, early July.

Meanwhile, our fourth series is beginning its design phase and we have a series and episode title. The series, designed and written by Sarah Morayati (Broken Legs), will be called Anna Chronicle. The first episode in this historical fiction adventure is Poets in Peril. It’s great to see the fourth series underway.

You may have noticed that Sarah is doing both the game design and the writing. In this case, She’s very passionate about the subject matter and knows it well. She’s also planning to use internal resources for puzzles and interactivity, but the project is hers to manage. The programming will still be done separately. The designers and writers (except for Gentry) all seem to love not having to do any programming.

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In other news…

The Apple platform versions of FyreVM (now an open source project on sourceforge.net) are cruising along. I look forward to announcing the first releases of Textfyre games on the iPhone and iPad.

In lieu of a professional user experience consultant, I am adopting some of my own ideas into a Windows version of Shadow in the Cathedral and then having those ideas ported to the demonstration Silverlight version that can be played online. Some of the ideas include hyperlinked exits, a “Try This” context menu, and voice over help. When ready, we will share the new ideas with everyone.